CHAPTER ONE   PERSPECTIVE         The bright pages in the story of man's progress and development are certainly those that tell of the mighty souls who come to the earth at critical times, manifesting a power of God or the Godhead himself in order to help the advancement of the race or liberate it from the darkness of a distress that overwhelms it. They are the bringers of new dawns by whose light and force the Ideal is seen again and a fresh endeavour made for its realisation.         When in his exclusive pursuit of the sordid aims of life, or in a long subjection of his soul to extraneous impacts, man forgets the real meaning of his existence, deviates from the path,

  APPENDIX I         MAHASAMADHI   December 5, 1950- I. 26 a.m. The fateful moment, The Great Withdrawal, Both self-chosen, self-willed.         Hitherto Sri Aurobindo had been working on his Savitri in his own unhurried way. Then for some months he immersed himself in a deepening calm, seriousness and self-absorption. Then one day, two months before the day, out of this profundity he broke forth and sprang upon his amanuensis the surprise; 'I must finish Savitri soon!' Startling words. Why this all too sudden hurry? ' The assistant's bewildered look met only an impassive face.' He did hurry through the revision that he had been making and came to an abrupt stop. Abrup

   APPENDIX II         SRI AUROBINDO AND THE SEEING WORLD   Too vast and too deep for the human mind, Sri Aurobindo has ever been a Truth and a Power active in the subjective world. And those open to him have been able to sense something of what he is. The bulk of the race, though more or less influenced by the Power, have yet to rise to the height which can help them to a clearer perception of his work. Happily, however, there have been seeing minds here and there who have already had some glimpse. We have in the body of the book had occasion to give a few instances, notably, of Poet Rabindranath Tagore who spoke of Sri Aurobindo in the immortal words of his soul, of

    CHAPTER THREE         LIGHT GROWING   Sri Aurobindo was now home in the ancient land o£ his birth, whose history dates back to the origin of man, the land where lived and worked saints, sages and seers, God-men and God-lovers, the masters of the highest wisdom ever vouchsafed to man. This wisdom enshrined in her, India has shone through the ages as a constant star of spiritual illumination to all seekers within her and without. But there was in the innermost sanctuary of her soul a truth yet unglimpsed. The time came for this truth to be revealed to humanity for its liberation from the thousand and one ills that afflict it all round.         One therefore came upon

CHAPTER TWO1         PROPHETIC DAWN         In studying the work of one whose whole life was a continuous fulfilment of the Will of God, our first concern should be to have in view the principal factors that formed the fabric of his being and of the country from whose soil he sprang. The meaning of his life may suggest itself through an attempt to discover what place it occupies in the historical development of India, and what significance it has for her future.         It seems he came just when his coming was most called for, we may add, when it was decreed by Providence. What he said and did was the culmination of the past endeavours of the race, of its high achievem

CHAPTER FOUR         NATIONALISM AS DHARMA         Momentous was the beginning of the twentieth century. The Shakti of India was dynamically at work for her political liberation the seed-idea of which she had already sown in the one who was to be its high-priest. ' The voice incarnate of India's soul,' he uttered the truth of the New Nationalism, not as a passing political expedient, but as an abiding aspect of the immortal Idea which is India's portion to fulfil in the divine ordering of things. Nationalism in modern times is nothing but an aggrandisement of national egoism. Here was a unique evangel, a broader, nobler and mightier conception of the awakened soul of this anc

  CHAPTER FIVE         TOWARDS A LARGER LIBERATION       THE spiritual visions and experiences Sri Aurobindo had in jail were indication enough that he was from then a passive instrument of the Divine-having no movement, no thought, no action of his which was not willed by God. In fact, this had begun even before, as he had himself said in :his letters to his wife , and of which all his external activities gave ample evidence. One so guided cannot indeed err, at least in the deeper sense of the Spirit's direct governance of the souls open to its influence. It was, as he himself said, a command of God that brought Sri Aurobindo to Pondicherry from Chandernagore where i